We have a few minutes for some questions and answers
if you guys have any.
And if you want to-- do you want to come up here so people can
ask you--
Yeah, that would be awesome.
Highly personal questions.
Anyway, feel free to fire away.
So good to be here with Lydia.
I'm just happy.
Here's another microphone for you.
Yes.
Do you hope to hear from Terry Gross, or have you?
This is actually not the first time I've been asked that.
Terry and I are very, very close.
No, I think I might have foreclosed
that possibility a little bit.
There is a video that Terry Gross made where she is
a murderer [INAUDIBLE],, and she plays--
Oh, really?
Excellent.
She plays an assassin in the hours
that she's not doing NPR interviews.
What about the hours when she is doing them?
Isn't she an assassin then?
[LAUGHTER]
Yes.
Can you talk a little bit about what
it's like to write a trilogy?
This is the third book in a trilogy, is that--
It is, it is.
Well, for me, writing a trilogy was just
a way to avoid writing one really long book because they
always sag in the middle, the long books.
They sag in the middle like a middle-aged person
such as myself.
And so I really just wanted to stay in the same--
I wanted to stay in the same world of made-up people,
but I wanted to be able to write in a slightly different way
over the course of that and to have a break between efforts.
And so really, it was just a strategy of mine to--
but the publishers weren't that pleased about it
because after the first one fails to sell,
then it's really hard to sell the second and third.
So unless you're writing you know something commercial,
trilogies can be really tricky, which
is why you don't actually see them
very often in literary fiction ever since,
like, The Alexandria Quartet, which was some 50 years ago.
You don't really see that many series in fiction.
You still do sometimes see cycles of books,
but it's pretty rare.
Kate Bernheimer wrote one-- sitting over there--
with a fairy tale structure.
But it's sort of frowned upon by people who want to make money.
Do you think you'll write a story about Diane Rehm?
[LAUGHTER]
That would be cruel.
[LAUGHTER]
I do listen to both of them all the time, so, you know.
Anyone else?
Shannon, what are you working on now?
Are you still writing to the novel about Tucson,
or is that-- what's happening with that?
Thanks for asking, I abandoned that project.
You did?
It was so long.
Tell me about it, I know.
No, that's five years of work on a novel
that I may pick it up again at some point,
but it's not doing what it needs to do.
So I'm working on auto fiction.
I'm playing with genre.
That's a genre that's big in France.
She explained to me earlier that it's all
from the point of view of cars.
[LAUGHTER]
You do animals, I do cars.
Right.
No, auto fiction is a genre that plays with the truth and it
messes with assumptions around memoir and fiction
and what's real and what isn't.
And I'm having a good time with it.
So these are short pieces, or--
I think it's maybe short pieces.
Maybe short pieces, but I'm not sure yet.
You know how you write something and it's like, what is this?
And you keep going and keep going and it's working,
and then it takes its form.
And this may be a collection, may be a novel, we'll see.
It's early and fun.
When it's early, it's fun still.
Yeah.
You guys have ties and roots in Tucson, right?
Do you have thoughts about an aesthetic-- a Tuscon aesthetic?
You know, like larger literary work?
Shannon, why don't you take that?
Wow, a Tucson aesthetic.
Boy, Tucson-- I've been to Tucson for 30 years,
I went to high school and college in here,
and I kept moving away and I keep moving back.
I plan to move away again and I'll probably come back again.
I will die here.
That's my plan, actually, to die in Tucson.
So aesthetically, no.
I don't see it.
Do you see a fiction--
I mean, poets have got it made in this town.
I mean, come on, look at this building that we're in.
That's the literary fiction writer in me
who really wishes there were a huge community of fiction
writers.
Well, you know, yeah, I mean, I don't ever
particularly myself write in a way that's geographically
specific particularly.
So I'm a poor answerer of that question,
but I love this desert.
I do, I love it very much.
I live here only because I love it.
There's certainly no economic incentive.
[LAUGHTER]
Anyone else?
Anything inappropriate, offensive in any way?
No.
Great, fantastic.
Oh, that was a joke?
[LAUGHTER]
Because we can both do that.
We can answer that.
Well, please, then, expound on your position
about being in that vast field bent over toiling.
I'm sorry, what was that?
I didn't catch the last bit.
Being in a vast field bent over toiling.
Oh, yes, bent over toiling.
Well, they do toil, they do.
I mean, you must agree, they do toil.
No, I mean I don't know what to say.
But I will say that I was very pleased at another reading I
gave when--
actually, it was in the South, it was in Virginia.
And there was a fellow in the audience who
wasn't one of the students who were
required to come to the reading by their professors.
So it was a guy from the community,
and he was very sort of proper looking and middle-aged
white person.
And after I read that passage about Ice Cube, he said,
"Was it "Nappy Dugout?"
Was that the song?
"Giving up the Nappy Dugout?"
I was like, yes, it was "Nappy Dugout."
Yes.
That was a good moment.
So I thought maybe you were going
to say, was it "Nappy Dugout?"
Kind of on that note, it seems like you
both have a really good time while you're writing.
Could you talk a little bit about what
your range of emotion is when you're
sitting down to do the things?
I make myself laugh, what can I say?
I mean, I'm make myself cry, too.
I turn myself on a little bit.
I mean, you know, if it's like--
OK, you wanted inappropriate?
If it's not doing it for you when you're writing,
then it's not going to do it for the reader.
So yeah, in the best moments, I will chuckle heartily to myself
and cry--
I'll make myself cry.
You make yourself cry?
Do I have to answer that?
[LAUGHTER]
I do, although not as much with my fiction.
But sometimes when I'm writing about the real world,
I weep terribly.
It's a sad thing to see.
Yeah, not the turning on, though.
[LAUGHTER]
And yeah.
Thank you, great.
Thanks.
Just picking, you all.
Just picking.
I've always laughed a lot while reading,
and I know that's sort of regarded as freakish by some,
but always, as a reader, I've laughed a lot.
I'll laugh a lot in public places as I read.
And actually, my father used to-- when I first
started to write books, he would ostentatiously
take my early books onto the subway with him
as he went to work and then laugh fakely, loudly,
as he read them and sort of hold them up
so people can see what he was reading.
But it did not result in huge sales.
[LAUGHTER]
But I do actually love writing.
I love it just about more than anything.
I just love it.
It makes me incredibly happy to do it.
And I would do it almost all the time if I could.
Please don't take that out of context.
[LAUGHTER]
Well, I think we'd better let these ladies sit down
and sign some books.
We have some books for sale, so please join us
for some capitalist investment.
And thank you so much for coming.
It's been a great evening.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]